


Plan or Solution

by Lalagant



Category: Dreaming of Sunshine - Silver Queen
Genre: DoS Hidden Mist Arc, Extensive Sharingan Headcanon Worldbuilding, Featuring Sasuke as ANBU Hawk Omake, Gen, Long-Suffering Shikako-Herder Sasuke, POV Uchiha Sasuke, Shikako's Signature Outside the Box Thinking, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:00:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27138343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lalagant/pseuds/Lalagant
Summary: Sasuke has a lot of experience with Shikako's plans. Sometimes though, Shikako's solutions are still just Shikako things to him.
Relationships: ANBU Hawk & ANBU Bat, ANBU Team Red, Nara Shikako & Uchiha Sasuke, Team Lucky 7
Comments: 14
Kudos: 372
Collections: Heliocentrism — a Dreaming of Sunshine recursive collection, Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	1. S-Rank Hokage Escort: in Kirigakure no Sato

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VagabondDawn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VagabondDawn/gifts).



> Beta'd by MageKing17 and flowersforgraves. Hippo'd by drowsyivy and Pepperdoken. 
> 
> Features extensive Sharingan world-building.

There are a billion drops of rain descending from the sky, shimmering in the overcast light, and throwing little fractals of chakra rainbows. Sasuke is too busy moving in the chaos—dodge, jump, _shunshin_!—to pay attention to them. He is memorizing the scene, but his attention is elsewhere. Shikako had told him once—in the early days of their genin team, after he had unlocked his Sharingan—that it wouldn’t do him any good to see things if he could not react to them. It had been true then. It had been true when she had reminded him during their first Chunin Exams. It had been truer with each tomoe higher his eyes had reached. It was true now in Kirigakure no Sato, with a bijuu—the Sanbi, he can see the three tails—thrashing on the water, churning the sea into a storm. His eyes see all now, in perfect detail. His eyes see too much, so he must focus on what he needs most right now. His eyes copy all now, every little movement made in his sight. His eyes copy too much, so he must decide what to ignore. His eyes let him reflect anything back in perfect mimicry, but there’s no point in mimicry when the original already failed. Not even doubling up Zabuza’s Suiryuudan no Jutsu had had an effect. Haku’s Hyoton was already more suited to the terrain and situation than anything Sasuke has copied. The Mizukage’s Yoton was more useful in the rain than his fire jutsu, and— that’s Shikako. Shikako, stilling for the briefest of instances, mouth moving for a soft sound. Sasuke sees everything, but he focuses on his teammates a lot. When he sees everything, there’s a lot to focus on, but watching Shikako means he’s in on the plan, not taken by surprise. In a group battle against a bijuu, there’s a lot more to see than usual, even with perfect Sharingan sight burning everything into his memory. (Tsunade is probably going to make him give genjutsu reports again, damn it.) Sasuke can see thousands of minuscule rainbows shatter like fireworks as all the raindrops and wind Shikako hits on her way over to him breaks against her chakra. That’s why he refocuses on Shikako: freezing for a moment before dashing in his direction to slide into place next to him? Her next words are nearly superfluous; he doesn’t need the Sharingan to predict his teammate for him.

“Can you catch its eye? I’ve got—” she says with a plotting look on her face emphasized to his Sharingan sight by the chakra technique on her skin.

“A plan?” he finishes. Kako always comes up with a plan; that never needs saying. “I’ve been trying. But—”

“Part of a plan, yeah,” Shikako says.

Sasuke nods back; in Shikako-speak, that means she’s got everything figured out. When she offers him a hand, it’s Sasuke’s reaction, not the Sharingan’s reflection, that has him reach out to complete the seal. The Sharingan would mimic the half seal she’d offered, and that’s not what Shikako is asking of him. Sasuke reaches out, sliding his right hand over and clasping Shikako’s left to complete the rat hand seal. For a moment, nothing happens as Shikako forms a fist over her chest. In the next, he’s watching her turn to shadow—the shadow-and-chakra a sparkling void different from the dark-coal-tinted-slightly-green-with-Shikako’s-chakra color of Shikako’s usual shadows, but still definitely Shikako’s—before he sees the shadow blur down her arm and up his and then all he sees is nothing.

Nothing becomes sliding out of shadow in front of the Sanbi’s snout, part of the only bits not covered in Shikako’s sparkling-abyss-void-nothing( _?)_ -shadow. Makes sense that she’d bring the weird-shadow-void out for an actual bijuu fight but not a match with Gaara. Sparkle-void version is so much harder to track than her regular shadow, but he’s seen it often enough at this point he’s coping with it better than he had at first. Ignore the perspective-warping shadow and use other things as cues. Sasuke can still sort of envision the depth and distance from the bits of grey-and-red bijuu peeking out between stark black-and-shine shadow binds, but anything actually covered in shadow just looks flat. Really flat. There’s no light to the shadows—as if the shadow is swallowing the light—but there is the sparkling chakra. It doesn’t really matter that much because his field of vision is suddenly all bijuu, but he does see enough to know the bijuu has stopped moving. He’s not really trusting his sense of motion— _not in motion, suspended in air, Shikako, what in the world did you subvert this time?_ — but it’s also not contradicting what he sees. Nothing of the bijuu he can see is moving and the way the rain falls is consistent. His eyes are spinning, trying to track all the chakra around and everything here has chakra and too many options and too many paths—but not for the bijuu. Tentative status, then: bijuu in Kageshibari no Jutsu or whatever Shikako has come up with this time. Shikako has such a habit of underselling her plans. Step one was, apparently, getting him. Step two is restraining the bijuu and getting them right in front of the bijuu’s eyes. Efficient; very Shikako, making some weird shadow path to accomplishing what anyone else would consider the two very different steps of restraining a bijuu and getting into position to genjutsu a bijuu. Though maybe he should have asked for some explanation after all, because now the question is: what is Sasuke supposed to do in this situation? Shikako has positioned him in front of the Sanbi’s closed eye. Then Shikako proves herself more steps ahead of him than he cares to count—as usual.

“Remember who you are,” she says, pushing their hands onto the Sanbi’s snout. Sasuke can feel the weird chakra thing she’s doing with it, too; _ugh_. It feels like there’s something ringing through his chakra, through _him_.

The eye he’s facing instantly snaps open.

That—that’s an entirely different chakra: what the snake. He just wasn’t seeing it because the eye was closed. Solid chakra bijuu skin. Right.

Sasuke casts his genjutsu—and it’s not quite taking; someone better than him at Sharingan genjustu has the Sanbi in thrall. Sasuke grits his teeth and puts more chakra into it, changing the rate his tomoe are spinning to match the motion of eye in front of him—

—and he shifts into a different world when the cycles align.

“Seal space,” Shikako says softly next to him.

He knows that this isn’t the real world, because the chakra pattern is very like genjutsu. “What the hell?” Sasuke says back, just as softly, tightening his grip on Shikako’s hand. It’s even, the chakra in this place—not like the chaotic mess of the battle. Plus, the world isn’t Sharingan slow, even if it’s Sharingan crisp.

Floating in an old-blood-red sky, there’s an indistinct transparent figure, the only point of clarity in it a pair of red eyes in a pattern he’s never seen. There’s the Sanbi, thrashing in a hundred rusted and warped chains.

Shikako tugs him backward by their joined hands a step, then two, then keeps going until they’re sufficiently far back he can see the entire bijuu thrashing.

“We need to get rid of that,” she says.

“How?” he asks. He’s really not that good at genjutsu. He’d been trying to throw the bijuu into something to guide it further back to sea, not whatever this is.

“That’s a good question,” she says, pausing. “Well, hm, sealing relies largely on theoretical understanding and willpower. If this place is a sealing space,” she says before adding more slowly, “or operates by the same rules...”

Shikako always has a plan, even when she acts like she doesn’t.

“We just,” he pauses, considering how to distill the Kako-ism, “think it away?” Sasuke straightens and rolls his shoulders back. Shikako has a plan. They’ve already made it this far. “Okay,” he says. Think away a bijuu and a specter.

Shikako lets go of their rat seal, walking back towards the Sanbi and— “Isobu, please stop fighting! We’re going to get you out of there!”

That was not the plan he thought they were on. Who is Isobu?

The thrashing bijuu stills. Its eyes—both glowing yellow on red, but no Sharingan—crack open. “Really?” comes a ridiculously high pitched and childish voice. “You’ll help Isobu?” comes from the giant jaws.

Bijuu. Sanbi. And apparently Isobu.

“We will. We just want the fighting to stop, okay? If we get you out of there, will you stop attacking us?” Shikako asks.

This is definitely not the plan Sasuke thought they were on.

“Is this a good idea?” he tries to keep his voice low but convey as much Shikako-what-the-snake-are-you-doing-right-now and Yoshino-san he can. Her mother is one of the few people who can reign Shikako in. Sasuke obviously doesn’t have the same skill, or he wouldn’t be standing here watching her negotiate with a bijuu she somehow knows the name of.

She shrugs—shrugs!—at him and replies quietly with, “It can hardly make this worse, can it?”

Sasuke thinks it could. Of course it could.

However, Shikako’s very Shikako solution works—he’s not calling this a plan anymore, they’re officially off any predictable path—because after a moment of thought, the raging bijuu they were just fighting agrees. “Okay. If you take the chains off, Isobu will stop fighting. It’s a promise,” it says before offering its pinky to Shikako.

Shikako then steps forward and puts her own pinky against it. “It’s a promise,” she says solemnly. His genin teammate is now making pinky promises with bijuu. It’s not even the teammate who has a bijuu around to make promises with. This is his life now.

Sasuke follows Shikako over to the base of one of the chains and watches her for a bit. If they’re committed, then... “Let me try,” he offers, drawing the blade Kakashi-sensei had given him from the sheath on his back and lighting it up with a flare of lighting-natured chakra. He brings it down in an arc on a warped link, and the link parts just as real aged iron would. Then the chakra in it crumbles like an earth jutsu—destabilizing and shattering from the break—before the wisps are absorbed back into the genjutsu.

“Duh,” Shikako says, before rolling her eyes, pulling the Raijin no Ken out, and lighting it up, but it’s not the lightning-chakra-cored-with-actual-lightning it is in the real world. “Now we’re talking.”

It’s nice to have thought of something before Shikako, for once.

They start clambering up onto the Sanbi—Isobu, Sasuke repeats to himself. There’s a lot of chains, and they mostly stay close, but it’s almost boring, rote work by the time they’re done. Aside from the climbing on a bijuu thing.

Shikako slices through the last chain and the figure in the sky shatters as the chains had. The chakra of the world shatters, the chakra fracturing from the figure, and they’re back in the same positions they’d been before going into that genjutsu world.

“I’m scared,” says Isobu, in that same high voice.

“I know, I know,” Shikako soothes it, dragging Sasuke’s hand along as she pats the bijuu on the nose.

Sasuke stares at their hands, the sparkling black of Shikako’s shadows slowly receding, and the iridescent raindrops exploding in a very different way than anything in the genjutsu had. The world is Sharingan slow again, but the only predictions he’s seeing are for the rain. The Sanbi is apparently actually Isobu, and Shikako’s negotiations are probably going to hold. Sasuke rather wishes Naruto was here to see this, because no one other than the dobe understands what it’s like to have Shikako around being herself, but it’s okay; he can show Naruto a genjutsu version when the dobe gets back. He’s actually really looking forward to it, even; the dead last had been insufferable about the Gaara and Shukaku fight after the invasion because Gaara had been Sasuke’s exam match. The exam match Sasuke hadn’t won. It still irks him that he didn’t beat Gaara (had lost to Gaara) in the Kusa no Chuunin Senbatsu Shiken, but Sasuke is just going to maintain he would have won their first match eventually if the invasion hadn’t derailed it. Naruto had been really annoying about his Chunin promotion, though the dobe had shown the brains to never brag about it to him when Shikako was around. Sasuke would have dearly loved to see a repeat of the lecture following their first team spar, but not enough to tell Shikako about it himself. Heh, but he’s amassing enough good stories to show the dobe. It’s definitely satisfying to imagine one-upping Naruto again.

“How long can you hold it?” Zabuza shouts. Then, louder, “Restraint team into position!”

Haku’s ice—the chakra sort of mirroring the way the facets of the physical ice itself are bending light, but not as smooth and matched as what it had looked like for the mirrors or the maze—quickly grows and surges over Isobu’s limbs. The ice over the places Shikako’s shadows have already retreated from are especially thick and dense with chakra.

“Wait! Wait! Stand down! Isobu has agreed to stop fighting!” Shikako shouts back, before starting to twist around. She lets go of their hand seal, and Sasuke finds himself repurposing the sticking chakra thing Shikako had shown them to stick himself to Isobu’s chin spikes. “Isobu has agreed to stop fighting,” she says, as if it doesn’t occur to her to mention that Isobu is the Sanbi. “We negotiated a ceasefire.”

“Isobu promised,” Isobu says. Sasuke can feel the vibrations, but he’s sticking to the spike fine, so doesn’t bother moving. He wouldn’t move without Shikako anyways.

“A ceasefire with the Sanbi,” the Mizukage says.

“Why not? Neither side wants hostilities to continue. Isobu had a corrupted seal on him—probably the remnants of a Jinchuuriki seal—that was why he was lashing out. Sasuke and I were able to stabilize it in return for his cooperation,” Shikako says smoothly, as if anything about the sequence of events was a normal, predictable, or even reasonable course of action to literally anyone else. Or as if the Mizukage was asking for Shikako’s (Shikako is crediting both of them, but Sasuke knows all he has contributed here is genjutsu and chain cutting) rationale instead of confirming who Isobu actually is.

There’s a silence. Everyone here probably has to rearrange their world views. Sasuke sympathizes. This entire situation is very Shikako. She’s also too many steps ahead mentally, but that’s easier for ninja to catch up with. Then, the Mizukage speaks again, “We certainly don’t wish to continue fighting. We are, after all, a new and peaceful Hidden Mist. In the middle of commemorating our new regime, in fact.”

That lukewarm statement is apparently all the agreement Shikako needs. “Well. There you go. Uh, this is Mei Terumi, the Fifth Mizukage, and this is Isobu, the Three-Tailed Turtle,” she starts making introductions. Sasuke thinks that Yoshino-san would be proud Shikako is defaulting to manners—it was definitely her that taught her children manners—but the oba-san who had taught him would have demanded more strict protocol and ceremonial phrasing. Sasuke doesn’t think either of them expected foreign kage or bijuu to be something their pupils needed to ever introduce, let alone to each other, though. Sasuke has some hazy memories of specific formulaic phrases, but nothing really suitable for this situation.

Then Sasuke feels them shift downwards. “I know you. You killed Yagura. He was my friend,” Isobu says, reproachfully.

“I did, and I killed you as well. Right here,” the Mizukage answers. Nevermind, Shikako definitely has the manners and politeness role right now.

“Yagura was trapped too, wasn’t he, Isobu? Like you were,” Shikako asks softly. Sasuke isn’t sure how she would know that, but the answer is probably something only she would deduce, so he’s not going to bother even trying. She stretches out her hand again, but this time she leaves it against Isobu’s face. At least this time she isn’t dragging Sasuke’s hand with hers. Sasuke isn’t sure he would pet anything normally, but he definitely doesn’t want to caress someone’s face like that. Even leaving aside the whole bijuu thing. His affectionate tactile experiences in the last couple years have been rather limited, to say in the least. Mostly to Shikako, and then friends, and then Kino.

“He was my friend,” Isobu says sadly.

And, well. Sasuke has manners too. It is entirely Shikako and her chosen solution’s fault he has to use them at this point in time for this situation, but he has them. “We can be friends,” he says. Sasuke sends Shikako a glare though. His life now involves offering to be friends with bijuu. This is entirely her fault. He and Shikako aren't the member of Team 7 who has a bijuu, yet here they are. “It’s not the same, but we can be friends.” He feels awkward repeating himself, but there aren’t that many words he has for this situation. Shikako had made their team friends—and linked in others—and they’d...just been friends. Sasuke hadn’t had to even say that they were friends. He’s especially never had to offer, and these are all the words he has.

“Isobu would like that,” Isobu says softly.

Thankfully Shikako takes over again, and Sasuke doesn’t have to try and find words anymore. “Let me introduce you to everyone, then. This is Haku,” she says cheerfully.

“Any friend of yours is a friend of mine,” Haku says to Shikako. “I am pleased to meet you,” he says to Isobu.

Shikako glances around as Haku takes over the introductions, and Sasuke flicks a meaningful glance down at the water. They jump off of Isobu’s jaw before they can be shaken around by more introductions. Sasuke uses the chance to catalog one last glance of the entire scene—less chaotic than the battle had been, but a light drizzle of chakra-laced rain, rippling dissipation of chakra carried off by the waves, everyone but Shikako and Tsunade leaking some chakra into the air or water from passive techniques, and shinobi slowly standing down all around the area. They land on the water, move a little ways away, and turn around. Sasuke takes in the sight of shinobi being introduced to a bijuu before turning his Sharingan off. It’s good his memories are going to be Sharingan-sharp because otherwise, Naruto was never going to believe this.


	2. Omake: Hawk & Bat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little omake; Sasuke as ANBU Hawk PoV.

It wasn’t, Sasuke reflected, totally out of character for Shikako to try and solve a rampaging bijuu problem by offering to help the bijuu.

Not that he had realized this about his teammate before she made the actual offer, using what is apparently the Sanbi’s name. His teammate knowing so much about bijuu wasn’t that odd. If she hadn’t before the encounter with Shukaku the Ichibi, then she would have learned everything there was to be learnt after Naruto spilled the beans on the Kyubi situation. It’s not out of character, but maybe it’s out of context.

He pauses a bit on this thought, but no, that’s not it. It’s definitely inconsistent with Nara Shikako, twin sister and shadow to Shikamaru. It’s just not out of character for Nara Shikako, part of Team 7. He remembers the academy and a quiet Nara shadow, always with a book somewhere near, following along in someone else’s wake. He hadn’t really ignored her, as much as just glossed over her existence when they weren’t taijutsu sparring. She had been part of the background. Just not in the way the obnoxious fangirls needing to be ignored had been. He also remembers reassessing his supposedly quiet and shy teammate after the bell test. He’s done that a lot, whenever Shikako manages something new that rearranges something in his world view. It’s almost a habit at this point—but after Kirigakure no Sato, he’d needed more reassessment than usual. Shikako’s solution did net them a guaranteed Jounin promotion in a few months, though, and a great story to tell the dobe. Even better, it’s the perfect story after Naruto’s smugness about his Chunin promotion. The youngest Jounin in the history of Konoha, aside from Kakashi-sensei and ~~Itachi-nii~~ **him** . Sasuke and Shikako are Jounin younger than Shisui-nii had managed it though. Sasuke reminds himself he’s an ANBU Taicho at 14, which isn’t far behind the record that  **he** had left either. Another thing Shikako had been right about: getting stronger.

It’s as an ANBU Taicho—specifically to Bat (Shikako)—that Sasuke gets his next revelation; Shikako is predictable about those if nothing else. “I’m going to need you to expand on that,” Hawk says. Sasuke knows he’s followed his friend’s plan without question before, and will again. Killer B is here though, and Sasuke would like to know before they end up nose to nose with a bijuu, again. He’s going to ask some questions when he can. Especially since the Hokage had not just made him taicho but taicho-with-special-discretionary-powers to Bat. He’s now responsible for Shikako and her Shikako plans and or solutions. When Bat drags out the mission explosives he knows aren’t enough to simulate an earthquake, he’s not disbelieving—Shikako has to have some kind of plan, even if it’s not one she’s saying in front of Komachi and Towa. It's still a Shikako solution but she apparently has a Shikako plan to go with it this time. Tsunade had made him taicho, but he wouldn’t have even had the chance to learn from Kakashi if he didn’t trust his teammates.

Sasuke was going to trust Shikako; she was his teammate—even if they are technically Bat and Hawk at the moment.


End file.
